In creating Triumph of Religion, Sargent collected, modified, and recycled motifs from other places and times to frame a new story of particular significance to Boston and its celebrated Library. Sargent Hall came to be known as an “American Sistine Chapel enshrined within a palace of democratic learning.” The object of “worship” here, however, was not the Christian deity of the “original” Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, but rather the informed and enlightened subjectivity that education could produce.